Manipulators – “psychological vampires”: they lure others into a trap of toxic relationships and slam it before the victim realizes that she came across. Psychologist Alexander Shakhov talks about what scenario such relationships are usually developing, and offers to go through a test for co -dependence.

All manipulators: partners, parents, friends or bosses – usually operate about the same scenario. This is how it looks from the position of the victim.

1.Love and euphoria

In the first act, the manipulator includes its charm to the maximum: gives a woman compliments, carefully cares for her, swear love to the coffin, makes plans for the future and does not forget to constantly promise, promise and promise again.

The victim at this stage behaves like a child who hoped for a miracle and finally received him. She wants to believe that the partner would really give her what she always lacked: love, care, understanding, trust, emotional closeness and warmth. She feels like a goddess, and sees her chosen one a prince. Relations with him seem like a fairy tale.

A woman remembers this feeling of euphoria that she is loved, and then she tries to return it, getting tucking more and more in the networks set by the manipulator. But with this specific man there will be no more happiness.

2.In secret to the whole light

At the second stage, the victim shall be delighted with his happiness with the whole world: he lays posts in social networks, tells her relatives and friends about how wonderful the man met her. She introduces him to loved ones, whom the manipulator successfully captivates. Someone, having observed these “ideal” relations from the outside, may suspect something amiss and try to warn a woman. But the “psycho -checker” will quickly notice this and make it so that the victim quarrels with this person.

3.The vague feeling that something is going wrong

This stage begins unnoticed: a man begins to write less often, allows himself to ignore messages, periodically late for meetings or canceling them, referring to fatigue. In the voice and gaze, indifference and irritation are sometimes read. The woman feels something wrong. But since she is already dependent on him, he cannot understand what exactly, and believes that these are temporary difficulties.

4.A blow to the patient

There is such a joke: the hunter shot a moose on a watering, he drinks water and thinks: “Something I drink and drink everything, but for some reason I’m getting worse and worse”.

The victim behaves similarly. The manipulator is no longer occasionally, but regularly and actively hits it in the most sick places. Suits tantrums and scandals, offended, manipulates a feeling of guilt.

A woman frantically tries to fix something, satisfy all the whims of a man, redraw her worldview for his needs. At first she feels devastation and despair, and then – a hot desire to return the fairy tale, which

she was shown at the first stage of the relationship. And instead of running from a predator, she runs after him.